SOURCE: “Growth of a Legend” in Charlemagne: The Legend and the Man, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954, pp. 282-311.

In the following excerpt, Lamb narrates the final months of the aged and ailing Charlemagne through his death and its aftermath, and explains how and why his legend grew even while his kingdom was being invaded.

It came first in quiet voices from the land. A boy picked herbs for medicine in a garden close. Bending low, he drew in the fragrance of hyssop and thyme, and he thought how when he carried the herb basket to the door where the old Benedictine waited, he would add his words, although he could not make much of a poem as yet. “Such a little gift, my father, for so great a scholar—if you were sitting here in this green darkened...